CPU 40% - Heat 80 Degrees

novalis · October 16, 2019 at 3:18 PM

Can anybody explain this?

**Iridium** · October 16, 2019 at 6:03 PM Official Post

Without knowing more about your setup and what you were running at the time, it's difficult to diagnose.

I'm guessing you have your RPi4 in a case and/or in a hot space. Try improving the ventilation to the CPU or think about a heatsink or a fan. Also, look at what addons you have installed, as not all are optimised for the RPi4.

The RPi4 is known to run a little hot but not that hot - at idle it should be around 55 - 60 degrees.

Mattx · October 16, 2019 at 6:49 PM

FYI:
Playing mp4 with .264 and Dolby without mmal-HW acceleration box checked, my Pi4 heats up to 75° Celsius, mostly around 70° with cheap passive heat sink (and open case without cover!), idle as Iridium said around 60° max....
and CPU load under these circumstances is really very low.
HTH

novalis · October 16, 2019 at 11:01 PM

Ok you're right I should have said a bit more. What was running... well I posted the screenshots. Nothing.

I know the Pi gets warm and I had that problem before, but not literally in idle. What is a bit weird is that cpu consumption is only around 40%.

With the case not closed (Front door open) and no heatsink it should not get over 80 degrees right?

This is a replacement I got the other day and I have not installed a heatsink yet, but I had one on the old one and that didn't do much, maybe 2-3 deg.

The PI is running without a monitor connected. Maybe that's why;)

novalis · October 17, 2019 at 12:15 AM

I changed the usb power cable from a rather cheap one 1m to a shorter one around 40cm, and guess what, the temperature went down to 73 degrees. Then I changed it again to a rather expensive one from Anker and the temperature went down again. Now I have around 63 degrees in idle.

Interesting.

**Klojum** · October 17, 2019 at 10:14 AM Official Post

Quote from novalis

Interesting.

All that just having LibreELEC idling? Or playing the same video with every test?

10+ degrees Celsius difference with just a different USB cable is quite weird to me.

**Iridium** · October 17, 2019 at 11:17 AM Official Post

At idle Kodi should be running at ~20% CPU - using VNC increases this somewhat. However, your bcmstat figures are very high. At idle the RPi4 should be 600Mhz arm 250Mhz core.

I suspect a rouge add-on. What add-ons have you installed apart from VNC?

What does dmesg and kodi.log look like?

novalis · October 17, 2019 at 2:19 PM

I have some addons installed, but not an awful lot. Some streaming apps like Netflix, Dazn, Mediathek stuff, Robwebber addons Cron, Backup, Auto library update and some subtitle addons like opensubtitle... enigma PVR is disabled.

That's it basically.

I have now tested the cables again and the difference between the good and the bad is approx. 10 degrees. Between 67 and 77 degrees.

**Iridium** · October 17, 2019 at 5:13 PM Official Post

I would try a fresh install on a new SD card and see if you still have an issue. If not, then slowly add your addons until you notice a problem.

Alternatively, disable all addons and see if you still have issues.

CPU 40% - Heat 80 Degrees

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